Idaho nuke company charged

Don Gillispie and Jennifer Ransom of Eagle were accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday of defrauding investors in a complex scheme they said was aimed at building a nuclear power plant in Idaho.

The SEC sought to freeze the assets of Alternate Energy Holdings, Inc. and Gillispie, 67, its chairman and CEO, and Ransom, 36, his girlfriend and senior vice president for administration. The commission said AEHI had sold millions of dollars in shares in the U.S. and Asia while manipulating its stock price and funneling secret profits to Gillispie and Ransom.

“In light of AEHI’s ongoing efforts to raise funding while promoting itself through a daily deluge of press releases, we needed to take immediate action to get to the bottom of the company’s misleading statements,” said Marc Fagel, Director of the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office. “Documents we have obtained to date indicate a scheme to personally enrich the CEO at the expense of investors.”